Oz Trip - Day 38

Day 38 – 8/6/2012 – Alice Springs (Finke Desert Rally Scrutineering)

Unfortunately, we awoke to a beautiful morning. We wished we had this morning yesterday! As it so often happens, the day that you have to leave, is always the best.

We packed up camp and headed for Alice Springs. Our only real time line for the whole trip, (apart from having to go back to work :- ( ), was to make it to Alice Springs for the Finke Desert Rally. It is Australia's premier off-road rally, similar to the Dakar Rally but much shorter and smaller.

Heading to Alice Springs - MacDonnell Ranges in the distance

Initially I had wanted to camp along the track somewhere but because it was our first time to the region and the event, and we were going to be in Alice for awhile we checked into the Big 4 on a powered site. In the end we think this ended up being the better option. It is not uncommon to get 10,000 people camping along the track between Alice and Finke for the weekend. We later heard that they estimated that there was about 15,000 people this year!!!

So with 15,000 people all trying to do a stock up before they headed down the track sometime over the next couple of days, it wasn't the smartest time to go shopping on a Friday afternoon, but we still did! The CBD where Woolies and Coles were was just chaotic. There were people and cars everywhere. It took us a few laps of the CBD to find a park.

We had an early dinner that night so that we could head off to see the scrutineering of all of the bikes and buggies for the race.

There were about 560 motorbikes and 86 buggies and cars. It was more like a show atmosphere. People everywhere, food stalls, a band, a bar and the big merchandising truck like at the V8's. Some of the more well known bike manufactures also had their stands, KTM, Yamaha etc etc

The specs in the photo is the flash reflecting off the dust in the air.

KTM Stand

A better view of the bikes

We went for a walk through the sheds where all of the bikes and buggies were.

Some of the hundreds of bikes

One expensive machine!

Probably a not so expensive machine

I wouldn't be putting money on these guys to win